Prickly

I started the day angry. I woke up 50 minutes early, which might not be such a bad thing except that I was very tired.  I made the decision to go to bed 50 minutes early to get much needed sleep.  Then I woke up 50 minutes early and realized that I haven't gained any ground.  I thought I would just roll over and go back to sleep and get the extra rest I needed.  Not!  My head was spinning.

First, I had a painful thought that I'd been a little short with a colleague yesterday afternoon.  She is the best person I've ever worked with, so she should be the last person I'd be short with, but I was.  Why did I do that?  Yes, why? 

I've been feeling prickly lately.  One perspective of spiritual growth uses the snake as a metaphor.  I know that is almost the antithesis of the Abrahamic traditions, which conceive the serpent as the symbol of the fall-from-grace of humankind--the reason Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, but the metaphor really does work.

When a snake grows, it outgrows its skin.  Every spurt of growth requires a new skin. The too-small skin must be shed before a new, larger one can take its place.  During the transition period, the flesh of the snake is tender until it "toughens up," and the animal is easily agitated because of the physical discomfort.

By that metaphor, life is a succession of growth--> shed skin--> discomfort-->comfort-->growth...etc.

Using the snake metaphor implies growing into a new skin results in "feeling prickly" for a while to facilitate spiritual growth to the next level.  I hope that my prickliness at my colleague really does mean that I am growing, but it feels like just the opposite.

My current job requires about 1/1000 of my capability; I am capable of so much more.  I am bored.  When I have sought to use more of my capacity, I've been thrown work that is even less challenging.  I wouldn't feel so bad if there weren't a need, but there is...everywhere. 

As I look out of my apartment to the fresh green of budding trees, I am once again reminded of growth and moving forward in time, signaled by the changing of the seasons.  I love to learn, and I love to grow.  I realize that unlike the trees in the park, I have not been learning, growing, and changing.  I am taking a couple of classes, but they will allow me to receive credentials for material I already know.  I believe what I  need is something to learn, something that will allow me to grow.  Maybe my prickliness is the result of stagnation.

For most of my life, my growth has been around my work, but clearly the current environment at my workplace isn't hospitable to that.  So, I am going to look around me for opportunities to grow elsewhere in my life. I recall being energized with some art history courses that I took a few years ago. I am certain that I can find something that will break me out of my current skin, and I am betting that, even if I do have a "new tender skin," I will feel less prickly in no time.

Going toward or running away?

The most primitive part of our brains--the part that formed millions of years before our rational brains--is hardwired to respond to fear.  When humans existed in the wilds, and life was a day-to-day struggle for survival, what is called the "reptilian brain" developed two basic instantaneous responses to threat: "fight" or "flight."  Interestingly, this primitive response will literally short-circuit the rational part of the brain when threat is perceived, stopping it from functioning. 

What does all this have to do with the spiritual journey? Almost everything, actually.  Because the reptilian brain is programmed for survival, it will try to keep us in survival mode.  It's purpose is to keep us alive.  By definition, living in constant fear is constraining and limiting.

The spiritual life is expansive.  It is one of learning, growth, and acceptance.  We are sent into this world with service to perform, spiritual growth lessons to learn, and gifts and talents to develop. If we do any of these things well, we will regularly look fear in the face. If we listen to what we know in our hearts, though, what compels us is the urge to thrive. 

It seems to me that there must almost always be the grappling of these two forces within us: the part of us that wants only for us to survive wrestling with the part of us that wants to grow, perform our service, use our talents...and thrive. Contraction versus expansion.

Not so many years ago, I can recall having made the statement that I'd never made a decision which was based on money considerations.  I would have said that I always listen to my heart and just know that if I do so, everything will work out.  Except when it didn't.  About 12 years ago, I lost everything...really. But for friends that allowed me to use spare bedrooms, I would have been in the streets. 

Circumstances from my early childhood had left me fiercely independent from a very early age.  I had gone from being a successful global consultant, author and professional speaker with a lovely home and office overlooking a lake to having no assets, being homeless and not knowing how I would pay for food.  How could that have happened to me?  I'd had a savings account since I was an infant and a well-funded retirement since my early thirties.  Then I had nothing.  I was terrified.  I plugged into my reptilian brain, and I haven't fully been able to shake it. 

I struggle with that.  I want to thrive.  I want to do the work I came into the world to do.  I want to learn and grow and to use my gifts.  Quite thankfully for this blog, I am getting my writer's groove back.  I really believe that we are to listen to our hearts and do what makes them sing.  The spiritual journey is about following that to which we are drawn, rather than running from what we fear.

After I'd completed my end-of-the-day ritual of affirmations, gratitude journal, and prayer last night, and had turned out the lights, I suddenly knew that something was wrong in what I'd posted yesterday.  Throwing back the covers and turning the light back on, I padded out to my desk and rebooted my computer in my otherwise dark apartment.  I felt it urgent to correct before I slept. Really, I think I needed to acknowledge my truth.

Yesterday I compared the human connection to Love source to that of the aspen grove which appears to be hundreds or thousands of trees, but shares a common root structure and is connect at the most fundamental level.  We look like individual people, but in truth, we are connected through a common source: Love. What I had said is that when we are connected to source that we couldn't be hurt.  I realized that was my reptilian brain talking about avoiding hurt.  My change, although apparently only a minor one, was to say that when we are connected through Love, we are safe and peaceful.  The shift is from running away from something--hurt--to moving toward something we want--Love, peace, and safety.  Such a small thing...and everything. 

On the spiritual journey, when I can be awake enough to remember (translate that I have disengaged my reptilian brain,) my real lesson is to follow Love. What I wan to move toward. That's all...and everything.

Everything is Planned to Teach Me Love

Some days as I go through my affirmations, one will particularly resonate with me, and then it hangs in the back of my mind all day. Today when I got to "Everything is planned to teach me love," the statement wouldn't let go of me and whispered to me all day.

Even before I got to the office, I was pondering, "Why does something need to teach me love?"  The immediate answer seemed to be that I don't know love.  When I focus on breathing into my heart, I am sure the "vibration" that I feel is God's love.  By extension, since I believe that we are all connected through God's love, I am sure that it should be the same or similar.

Yet, I don't know that I've experienced that feeling with any human being when I know I should feel it with all human beings.  Hmmm...  Maybe I don't know love, or don't know how to feel love.  Or, just maybe, I've guarded myself so that I shut others out.  Ouch!  That again.

I believe that part of our basic equipment as humans is to be able to give and receive love.  Is it possible that my equipment is so under-used and rusted that it has forgotten what is basically human?

One of my favorite little books is one that has been around for awhile, called The Knight in Rusty Armor (Robert Fisher.) The book relates a parable about a knight who has lived in his armor so long that he can no longer take it off at the end of the day when he is done doing battle.  Only when he weeps at not being able to hug his family do his tears cause pieces of his armor to drop off. 

I sense his experience may be similar to what occurs to well guarded hearts, like mine.  I haven't cried...yet. I have been overwhelmed with a deep sense of loss about all the people I have "loved" intellectually in my life but for whom I have thought it was just too risky to really open my heart. Well, I didn't really "think" the risk part in a conscious sort of way.  I am pretty certain, though, that it was happening in a less-than-conscious way. Now I realize that whatever damage I thought might be done to my heart could only be exceed by the sadness at not having really let "my people" in. 

I feel like a toddler at this, taking my first wobbly steps.  I am certain that I need something to hang onto as I steady myself, and my heart tells me that something will be God's love--it will be my compass teaching me love.